The general concept for delivery of sound recordings or clips and visual recordings or clips by way of the Internet is known and described in various U.S. patent applications. (See Bernard et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,213; Kaplan, U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,916; Barbara, U.S. Pat. No. 5,926,789; and Doerr et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,949,411.) Such methods are typically used to sell products to consumers. For example, a web page from Amazon.com allows a user to listen to samples of music for before purchasing compact discs (CD's) by mail.
Also, cell phones may be programmed to ring with a tune of a song or musical composition, and have become increasingly popular. However, cellular phones currently on the market can only be either programmed to only play music (such as conventional MP3 type phones) or to deliver “ring tones” with an electronic chime or ring tone rather than an actual recorded song, human voice, or musical composition. Additionally, these ring tones must be factory installed in the telephone or the delivery methods just directly interface with the Internet and require the consumer to be on line to access and download a particular mechanical ring tone.
At the same time, various methods have been developed and are being used to enable a phone user to make more effective use of the variety of telephone service now available. For example, “caller ID” function is one such feature which allows the recipient of an incoming call to identify the caller based on textual information provided on a telephone display panel. A patent to Borland, U.S. Pat. No. 6,178,230 discloses an improved telephone system and method that determines the identity of the person being called for a telephone having more than one user and can identify the person being called by sounding a distinctive ring associated with the person being called. A mechanical ring tone is played depending upon the caller ID signal received to orally alert the telephone user as to who is calling without reading the telephone's display panel.